The Gaminella lodge

The Gaminella hill is the most imposing hill in Santo Stefano Belbo, just behind the house where Cesare Pavese was born. 

Here, in the novel The Moon And The Bonfires, lies Padrino and Virgilia’s lodge, where Anguilla, the book’s main character grew up. When he comes back home, years later, he finds Valino and his family living there, but the atmosphere is the same. 

Episode #17 of our series on the places of Cesare Pavese, Io vengo di là, was shot right here, presenting the renewed network of trails unfolding among the hills in Santo Stefano Belbo. The lodge can be in fact reached through a trail that runs uphill, starting 400 m after Cesare Pavese’s birthplace. Since 2002 the meadow in front of the lodge has been hosting one of the six literary benches that celebrate key Pavese places in our area.